Al-Qaeda’s number two Atiyah abd al-Rahman has been killed in Pakistan, the United States said, claiming another “tremendous” blow to the group following the death of Osama bin Laden.

News of Rahman’s demise comes as the US gears up to mark the 10th anniversary of Al-Qaeda’s most spectacular attack, on September 11, 2001 on landmarks in Washington and New York, which killed nearly 3,000 people.

Rahman, a Libyan, was killed in the northwest tribal Waziristan area on August 22 after being heavily involved in directing operations for Al-Qaeda, a senior US official said, without divulging the circumstances of his death.

However, local officials in the region told AFP last week that a US drone strike on August 22 on a vehicle in North Waziristan killed at least four militants. It was not clear if the two incidents were connected.

For almost 10 years we have been engaged in a massive and many-fronted war advertised as a war on terror-war on Al Qaeda. Recent reports put the total cost to America of this war on terror at around $3 trillion. This is not counting un-countable covert operations with secret budgets, and it does not include the war in Libya or covert wars elsewhere.

For the last 10 years of the Cold War, the period of our heightened expenditures against a war marketed as a war against communism, we reportedly spent slightly under $3 trillion.

For a moment let’s forget about the exaggerated and sometimes dubious Soviet threats that were being sold to our nation during the Cold-War, and assume all of them legitimate and warranted. Okay?

We had the Soviet military with over 5 million men. We were dealing with Long-Range Ballistic Missile capabilities. We had an empire with a declared arsenal of 39,967 tons of chemical weapons. We were faced with massive nuclear arsenals and warheads, sophisticated fighter aircraft, tanks… All that, and of course the added fear propaganda and jazzed up other threats to go with it. My point here is not how scary an adversary the USSR was to the United States. Here is what I want you to do:

Take into perspective and compare the size, budget, militaristic and technological capabilities, and the vast power of our former adversary, the USSR, to the current alleged terrorist adversary, Al Qaeda, whom we have supposedly been fighting for ten years.

Announcing that “al Qaeda leaders have been killed in Pakistan drone strike” is like a reset button. People seem to forget all the civilians killed that it took to get another “leader.” And as the article below is pointing out; do we really know if this is happening with all these smoke and mirrors?

The next time you consider voicing opposition to the illegal bombardment of Pakistan with drone delivered U.S. missiles, consider this – the drones are effective. So effective, in fact, that they can kill terrorists who have already previously been killed.

Once again this week we have been reliably informed by U.S. officials via the ever present SITE intelligence group via the terrorists themselves, that a drone delivered missile has successfully taken out Al Qaeda’s number three man:

The operational leader of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan was killed in an American missile strike in Pakistan’s tribal areas in the last two weeks, according to a statement from the terrorist group issued late Monday that American officials believe is correct.

There are apparently no current photos for Abu Zubaydah, who we had been told was a top leader of Al Qaeda.

by Nor Cal Truth June 2, 2010

The official story is changing slowly, towards the truth. I hope people are still listening. Here is a story from the National Post in Canada

The federal government case against Mohamed Harkat appeared to suffer a significant blow yesterday when a document was introduced in court showing that Abu Zubaydah, once considered a 9/11 mastermind, had nothing to do with the attacks.

The document, which quotes U. S court filings declassified last week, shows that Zubaydah, once believed to be one of the top leaders in al-Qaeda, was not even a member of the terrorist group.

Update #1 – I have tried to introduce with why I see this as an important development in the story of 9/11 due to conversations with friends of mine. Though it is really late at night now for me to try to write, here it goes:

There are only a few that know what is happening behind the smoke and mirrors. The fact that not even the members of Al Qaeda expected the towers to fall might say a lot. The towers did not fall from fire, we know that. The towers did not fall from the planes, we know that too. Building 7 is only emphasis of these facts.

The CIA has detainees that are surprised at the towers collapse on 9/11.

Infact the world was surprised that the towers fell, not just Al Qaeda,

Ultimately al Qaeda was never in full control of the operation known as 9/11.

The concept of a building the size of WTC 1 or 2 being turned to pieces by a plane’s impact could not possibly be in the mind of a hijacker: It is not possible. Did the USS Cole sink? Our defense being another issue altogether, everyone knows there were plenty of warnings to intelligence agencies – so Al Qaeda never fooled anyone, really

So there they are, sitting in jail cells illegally – the dupes and the duped, unknowingly grunts of a front organization, bewildered, just as all of the world was on 9/11/01, as to how the towers fell.

Osama bin Laden had no idea the U.S. would hit al-Qaeda as hard as it has since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, a former bin Laden associate tells WTOP in an exclusive interview.

“I’m 100 percent sure they had no clue about what was going to happen,” says Noman Benotman, who was head of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group in the summer of 2000.

Benotman’s assessment is backed up by a former Central Intelligence Agency officer, who was active in the fight against al-Qaeda. The officer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, says “several captured terrorists have said publicly that al-Qaeda never expected the towers to fall. Their goal was to frighten people and impact the U.S. economy, so they really didn’t plan for the massive response the U.S. launched.”

Obama is masking the real issues over nuclear weapons by presenting the idea that nuclear terrorism is a major threat, shared Michel Chossudovsky, Director of the Canadian Centre for Research on Globalization.

“What is disturbing about this summit in Washington is the fact that the real threat to global security is nuclear war between countries. It is not Al-Qaeda which in any event is not able to constitute intelligence as set by the CIA,”Chossudovsky acknowledged. “It is an elusive network of organizations. The real threat is the threat of nuclear war and particularly the threat of a nuclear attack by the United States and Israel directed against Iran.”